


The Party

by Seek_The_Mist



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Cheesy, Christmas Fluff, Christmas Party, Drinking & Talking, Kissing, M/M, Mistletoe, Pynch Secret Santa 2016, alternative universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-12 02:30:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9051691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seek_The_Mist/pseuds/Seek_The_Mist
Summary: The engineers of the Glendower Consulting Firm are on track for a classy Christmas Party. They didn't expect the Cabeswater Lounge Bar to accidentally overbook them with a social centre/art consortium that will wreak havoc on their plans.Adam Parrish definitely did not expect to meet someone at an office party gone wild.   "In the span of the next thirty minutes, it became evident that The Greywaren’s crew was there with the intent of bringing the house down and would hold no prisoner in their path."  Written for the Pynch Secret Santa exchange 2016





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ladanse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladanse/gifts).



> Second and last work that I wrote for the Secret Santa, this crazy stuff is the product of two afternoon as a hostage of a sudden inspiration.  
> The result came to the rescue as a missing secret santa for Ladanse (a.k.a bollywood-and-phoenix-feather): dearest, I wish you enjoy reading this as much as I self-indulgently enjoyed writing it! <3333
> 
> I hope everyone is having the best festive moment ever, Merry Christmas for those who celebrate it, for all the others enjoy the food and the sales :DDDD

  
  
  


**Underneath the mistletoe…**

  
  
  


The loft bar was booming with trashy pop music, the type you hear at the radio and refuse to admit it makes you feel like dancing even while you’re humming the tune under your breath. The lights had been dimmed enough to leave the illumination to random multi-coloured flashes among the Christmas decorations. The overall effect was vibrant in the terrible way any event that catered to young employees fresh from the university could be.

What made it so unbelievably comical was that Adam had listen to Lindsey micromanaging their engineering consultancy firm’s Christmas party for weeks.  
She had accounted for everything, from reasonable things as the location to delirious details as the shades of the glitters on the wreaths; all the participants had to agree to the general plan and then to all the detailed proceedings, which had made the Christmas party a nightmare of the office since early October. Every one of them had paid their due deposit, filled the tab for the drinks and complied with the dress code. By the time they all gathered at the meeting point by the tube station, Lindsey had taken a look at them and proudly proclaimed that this was going to be the _fanciest, poshest, smoothest and best organized party the Glendower Firm has ever seen since its opening_.

Then, at the entrance of the Cabeswater Loft Bar, they found themselves cramped together with another group, half of their size but three times more lively. 

Under the apologetic smile of the receptionist and Lindsey’s gaze of horror, their booking had been accidently overlapped with the managing team of The Greywaren, half an artist consortium, half a social centre for problematic teens and youth to express themselves through art. 

_Good thing_ , the receptionist had said, conciliatory and friendly if worryingly distracted by thin air, _that the Loft can hold twice your size combined. You can all celebrate Christmas together_.

Given how painful it had been to organize the whole deal and how everyone had poured way too much money in the process, there wasn’t ground for disagreement. Not even while Lindsey looked closer to a manslaughter charge than to Christmas spirit. 

Adam had a life’s worth of experience in poker-facing his way through way worse than this, so he felt like he made a decent job at looking appropriately scornful when the only thing he wanted was laughing his _ass_ off.

In the span of the next thirty minutes, it became evident that The Greywaren’s crew was there with the intent of bringing the house down and would hold no prisoner in their path. 

The tastefully diffused and cotton-soft music Lindsey had selected got substituted for an obnoxious mix that wouldn’t have been out of place in an undergraduate cheesy party, all by the hands of three middle aged women who took control of the DJ console, patiently followed by an imperturbable man neatly dressed in shades of grey. 

Lindsey and her die-hard associates tried to enforce a stubborn and snotty separation of the two groups and pretend that the sabotage of the “perfect classy Christmas party” wasn’t happening at all. However, within one hour, Gansey and Henry were disappearing towards the service rooms with a short girl with a weird Christmas-themed dress and spiky hairs full of clips, because _why, yes, I’m sure we can figure out a way of changing the lighting_. Adam, looking from the distance, knew his closest colleagues well enough to recognize them as _smitten_ and trying to put their engineering degrees to the useful task of impressing this artistic girl.  
The undisputable gain of whatever they pulled up was the dropping of the sensible diffuse lighting in the loft in favour of flashing lights of questionable colours.

Adam was joined by the three of them as soon as they came back ― triumphant high and just in the right mood to take advantage of the ignominious bar tap ― and got to know that the girl, Blue, was the daughter of one of the three middle aged women at the DJ console. Persephone, Calla and Maura had been the founding members of what had only been a small suburb social centre, before growing into The Greywaren.  
Blue promptly called over a fair-skinned, fair-haired boy ― who was probably not a boy given the policy for the admission at the Lounge but looked as such nonetheless ― as soon as he disentangled himself from the growing mess of the improvised dance floor. Noah, they learned, had been one of the fist long-standing “projects” of the centre; while they did not talk about what made him such and what happened to him, they were cheerfully involved in countless of stories from what had to be Blue and Noah’s teenage years.

When the theme of the shenanigans allowed it, Adam, Henry and Gansey tried to counter with stories from their Princenton’s years ― surely more exciting than their life now after being recruited as a team from Glendower Consulting. This only served to up the game, among increasingly delighted if vaguely hysterical laughter and a steady flow of glasses of wine, gin&tonic and fruity cocktails.  
Upping the game, as it turned out, involved expanding the stories to more characters. Apart from Maura’s partner, who was solely referred to as “Mr. Gray”, the stories started to involve an increasing amount of this Ronan guy. By the sound of it, he was another one of the long-standing protégées of The Greywaren and, as Noah, he had been around long enough to be promoted from _kid to take care of_ to _member of the caretakers_ ; that say, Adam would have paid money to be a fly on the wall during his and Calla’s alleged sass matches, if at least a third of them was true. 

The first time they managed to catch Ronan and forcibly drag him into the conversation, the lure was cars. Ronan in flash and bones was tall, dressed in menacing black and leather without a hint of Christmas themed clothing, as dangerously handsome as a well-sharpened knife. Adam, who had years of training in not tripping over himself when presented with Gansey’s unbelievable attractiveness, downed his wine at the sight and had to take another glass.  
Ronan was all unpolished edges and rude humour, but his swearing was more like a singer than a sailor and he did talk about cars with a considerate hands-on knowledge. He was immediately judgemental of Adam, Henry and Gansey’s degrees; when Adam found the courage to admit that he worked his ass off as a mechanic throughout high-school, however, Ronan gave him a really weighted look. It was more rewarding than it had the right to be. 

The second time they caught him with Latin and ridiculous trivia about medieval history. Gansey was brilliant in the second and dull on the first while trying to look competent in both; Adam had aced Latin in high-school and internally whished he was less rusty; Henry was the master of bullshitting his way through everything, which Blue and Noah seemed to appreciated wholeheartedly.  
Ronan ended up downing his pint of beer while in their company and they lost him again to a drink refill.

The third time, they went to recover him specifically because Blue had spent fifteen minutes talking about the flock of ravens that lived by the rattling colonial house that was the Greywaren’s headquarters. Nothing so weird about it, if not for the fact that she was claiming that Ronan had a personal raven among them, going by the name of _Chainsaw_ , and Adam was calling _fucking bullshit_.  
They found him with an angel of a boy called Matthew, who apparently was _Ronan’s little brother_. Adam had a hard time in seeing the genetic legacy, but then he noticed the way they behaved next to each other and he resigned again to not knowing what to do with himself. Matthew was more than happy to provide all the photographic proofs of Chainsaw’s existence from a whole folder of pictures in his smartphone. Matthew also had the evidence from another story involving cows and Virginian countryside.

There was something fundamentally unfair in Ronan’s delinquent rudeness, his sharp-edged beauty and the fact that he was apparently a _fucking Disney character in disguise_.

By the end of the night, Adam was a little flustered-drunk, Henry had caught up with what was happening and there was an air of conspiracy between him and Blue and Noah. Gansey, bless him, was still fundamentally oblivious to how his best friend had apparently turned into a cliché movie trope and was pining around a stranger at a Christmas party.

Adam’s self-induced scorn ended up accounting for very little in the moment the coloured lights of the Cabeswater Lounge flickered and got off, with the exclusion of the too-dim and diffused green ones. Adam leaned heavily against a partition wall; the reverberation of green light against the ceiling was like a suggestion of artificial northern lights in the darkness, and it didn’t really help the way the ground was half-uncertain under his feet.  
He straightened up, hoping to rectify the spinning head situation, and failed miserably by finding himself staring at a broad figure half-turned away from him. Ronan’s fair skin was almost translucent in the current brightness and his glass of beer glistened empty in his hands. It shouldn’t be so easy to spot him already, after just a few hours of drunken dancing around. 

Adam breathed deeply, feeling younger than he had the age to be and more light-headed than his steadfast rationality usually allowed, and let his eyes roam, unnoticed.  
Ronan had taken his leather jacked off at some point, and he was dressed inappropriately for the weather, the hem of his shirt too wide around his broad shoulders. When he craned his neck, Adam’s eyes zeroed on the blurred and confused lines that clashed against his skin like a pitch-black smoke.  
Of course he had an enormous tattoo. _Of fucking course_. He could not help the groan that emerged from his throat. 

He got the chance to regret it immediately because Ronan, in the general buzz of music and chat, managed to zero in exactly on that sound. Diverting his eyes to try not to get spotted was evidently useless and when Adam glanced around again Ronan was close, dropping his empty glass and getting closer. 

“Do you always stare strangers like this, Adam…?” He leaned heavily towards him, one forearm on the wall behind him.

Under the short-circuit of his own mind, Adam’s year at Princenton ― full of networking events that required presence of mind in way worse situations ― only registered the pause in the questioning tone and provided a single response, “…Parrish.”

Ronan chuckled as if deeply entertained, “Adam Parrish, do you always ogle?”

At some point someone would have to explain how could you possibly end in a situation so cheesy that a dialogue like the one they were having could be on the table. That, and how can a 6-feet-and-counting walking warning like Ronan have such long, bent eyelashes. 

“No…” he remembered to reply after a too-long pause, “It’s just this _damn_ Christmas party.”

Ronan directly laughed in his face, as if Adam was entertaining him and the situation was deeply pleasing for him. It was _insufferable_. “Fucking rad, Parrish.”

Adam gritted his teeth, wishing to be less attuned to Ronan’s looming shape and the intimacy of the conversation. “You’re an asshole, has anyone ever told you that?”

The smile sharpened, “The Maggot – Blue – wrote some essays on the subject.” His eyes were even bluer when they were glittering with mirth. “Has anyone told you that you’re standing under a whole bush of mistletoe?”

Adam’s eyes flashed up, alarmed. Sure enough, that thing he had archived as a standard wreath was dotted with white berries and _Jesus Christ this was getting ridiculous_. He took a deep breath, but couldn’t get himself to move away from the possibly-accidental cage of Ronan arm so he just blurted out the most stupid reply ever. “No one has.” 

For one, long second, Adam was sure that Ronan was on the verge of laughing his ass off at him, given how his expression crumbled on itself. Then he just murmured, “Good,” and pressed one hand on the right side of Adam’s neck.  
Adam really wanted to turn and look at it, or lean into it, or just contemplate how incredibly warm it was; then the hand was quickly followed by Ronan’s lips on his own and that _definitely_ required attention.

Everything in Ronan was foreboding, asking for a fight, promising to burn you to the ground, so all the clues suggested Adam that he was going to be subjected to the same treatment and it was going to be _glorious_.  
Instead, Ronan’s thumb slowly caressed along the muscle of Adam’s neck, tense from rising his head to meet the kiss, and his lips came and went in gentle flutters of warmth. Adam got hungry, then _hungrier_ , then his eyes closed and he stopped thinking about how trite it was to kiss with a stranger ― even one too hot for his own good ― under the mistletoe at a work Christmas party. 

He opened his mouth and Ronan responded immediately, running his tongue on Adam’s lips and then sliding into his mouth as if he was falling.  
They kissed too deeply to be casual, and it was glorious all the same. Adam had been kissed before in his life ― both when drunk and when sober ― but it never felt like just _this much_. Their instinctual match was delicious, no teeth clattering, the easy pace Ronan was enforcing allowed them to test the waters and dive in together. 

Ronan’s left hand was running on Adam’s side, fingertips tracing the dip between his ribs and Adam’s chest jumped, filtering a helpless sound into the kiss. He became aware of how breathless he was, and how tightly he was gripping Ronan’s arms.  
Separating was wet and tentative and Adam wanted to do a lot of things, but not _let go_.

Ronan opened his eyes and his beauty was even more savage, as if whatever fire he ignited into Adam had filtered to the kiss to soar inside him as well.

“How many kisses per branch of mistletoe?” Ronan panted, after some long seconds, the noise around them white and indistinct, the darkness encompassing.

Adam looped his arms around his shoulders and dragged him closer again, “Just some more.”

  
  
  


**…Hold me tight and kiss me slow.**

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading this clusterfuck of a fic!
> 
> The quote between the opening and the ending is from "Extraordinary Merry Christmas", and I personally love the way it sounds.
> 
> You can talk to me about how delirious the whole situation is and how little of his shit Adam Parrish has got together through kudos and comments.  
> Conversations are always open on my [Tumblr](http://seekthemist.tumblr.com)!


End file.
